Traditional sports participants, such as, but not limited to, tennis, racquet ball, squash, baseball, golf, and football players have needs and wants with their sporting equipment. In addition, non-traditional sport participants, including without limitation, power sports riders, bike riders, snow skiers/boarders, skate boarders, wake boarders, etc. have similar needs and wants with their sports equipment. Three of these needs and wants are equipment protection, customization, and vibration reduction to allow for a better experience.
Moreover, sports participants many times have a strong desire to customize their equipment and make it aesthetically pleasing in a way that reflects their individuality and uniqueness as a person. Sports participants can accomplish this with color, text, patterns, and graphics that are applied to or made as an integral part of their equipment. For instance, a snowboarder may apply stickers to his or her board that reflect the individuals personality, or a motorcycle rider may apply paint to his or her motorbike to customize it, or a sneaker manufacturer may customize a color scheme and sneaker design in view of a sports celebrity, such as a basketball star.
As there are advances in technology and materials, the cost of sports equipment continues to increase for a wide range of premium products that tend to be the products most in demand by the public. Unfortunately, many types of sports equipment are damaged during use, and given the significant investment already made in purchase of the sports equipment, sports participants desire protection and a longer usable life for the sports equipment. For example, a tennis player frequently hits his or her racquet on the court during the course of play potentially damaging and wearing down the racquet. In order to protect the tennis racquet, tennis players, for instance, often use a protective head tape applied to their racquet to prevent chipping, and scratching of the racquet frame caused by the racquet hitting the court during the course of play. However, head tape offers minimal protection and, after as few as one forceful hit to the court, the head tape will likely shred and offer no real protection. In addition, the head tape becomes a shredded and gooey mess on the frame. Therefore, many players will remove and reapply the head tape many times which is burdensome to the player, or, more often than not, the player will cease to use the head tape because of the minimal protection and extra burden and hardship related to using existing types of head tapes.
A related problem of sports equipment becoming chipped or damaged concerns a mountain bike frame which can be scratched and chipped during rigorous riding. It is therefore desirable for the bike frame to include some type of frame protection.
Another concern with the use of sports equipment is that a number of sports participants experience excessive vibration traveling through the equipment causing pain and possible injury as a result of the vibration transmitted from the equipment to the person's hands and body during play. Some common scenarios are golfers, tennis, and baseball players striking a ball causing vibration and shock to travel up the player's piece of sports equipment and then transmitted to the player's hand and body. This vibration can be painful and even cause damage to the player's bones and joints.
Therefore, there is a need for a device that can be easily applied to sports equipment offering protection and vibration reduction and optionally offering customization thereof. The embodiments described herein satisfy these and other needs.